1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a music interactive toy and/or educational tool. More particularly, the present invention relates to such toys and/or educational tools for teaching people of all ages to recognize, by sound and name, the musical notes of the scale.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Music plays a major role in the lives of most people. Music is often a universal language, allowing people who do not speak the same language to nevertheless communicate in one form or another. For many people, listening to music is an enjoyable, often relaxing exercise. However, while children are taught the basics of the speaking language (a, b, c, . . . ) and the numeric language (1, 2, 3, . . . ), very little, if any, emphasis is placed on the musical language (do, re, mi, . . . ). In fact, even musicians, while being extremely skilled at their particular instrument, sometimes have very little knowledge concerning the musical language. Many musicians learn to play by sound without ever associating musical notes with their given names ("do", "re", "mi", "fa", "sol", "la", and "ti").
But most people do not have the natural born talent to learn how to play an instrument without knowing the musical language. Thus, it would be extremely beneficial to begin teaching the musical scale and the names of the musical notes (i.e., "do", "re", "mi", "fa", "sol", "la", and "ti") to children at a relatively young age (even as young as under two years old), when their minds are the most receptive to new information. However, because most children have relatively short attention spans, any effective method of teaching the musical scale to children must hold their attention while simultaneously educating them.
A number of systems and aids have been proposed for teaching the musical scale to children. A form of such a device is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,114,501 to Tanaka. That device includes plural dolls, each of which has a flexible bellows and a uniquely configured air chamber and air passageway to produce a unique noise in a particular pitch or tone. This device, however, provides no means for varying the sound output by the dolls to cater to different children's interests in an effort to capture and hold their attention.
Another proposed device is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,540,132 to Hale, and includes plural puppet characters that incorporate tonal devices such as battery powered electronic devices that emit a sound in a tone which corresponds to that of the musical note with which the puppet character is associated. The tonal device is housed inside the puppet and includes a pressure sensitive switch to activate it. This device also suffers from the shortcoming that there is no way to change the output format of the sound being generated depending on the person using the device.
Accordingly, it will be apparent to those skilled in the art that there continues to be a need for an improved music teaching device for teaching people to distinguish musical notes by sound, sight and/or name simultaneously. Furthermore, there exists a need for such a music teaching device that is adaptable to the particular user of the device and to his or her interests. Also, the present invention teaches understanding the relative changes in pitch between the notes by visualizing these changes in a graduated increase in size of the colored dolls, corresponding to each note. The present invention addresses these needs and others.